Heads Up, Ears Down

This blog accurately identifies depictions of violence and cruelty toward animals in films. The purpose is to provide viewers with a reliable guide so that such depictions do not come as unwelcome surprises. Films will be accurately notated, providing a time cue for each incident along with a concise description of the scene and perhaps relevant context surrounding the incident. In order to serve as a useful reference tool, films having no depictions of violence to animals will be included, with an indication that there are no such scenes. This is confirmation that the films have been watched with the stated purpose in mind.


Note that the word depictions figures prominently in the objective. It is a travesty that discussions about cruelty in film usually are derailed by the largely unrelated assertion that no animals really were hurt (true only in some films, dependent upon many factors), and that all this concern is just over a simulation. Not the point, whether true or false. We do not smugly dismiss depictions of five-year-olds being raped because those scenes are only simulations. No, we are appalled that such images are even staged, and we are appropriately horrified that the notion now has been planted into the minds of the weak and cruel.


Depictions of violence or harm to animals are assessed in keeping with our dominant culture, with physical abuse, harmful neglect, and similar mistreatment serving as a base line. This blog does not address extended issues of animal welfare, and as such does not identify scenes of people eating meat or mules pulling plows. The goal is to itemize images that might cause a disturbance in a compassionate household.


These notes provide a heads-up but do not necessarily discourage watching a film because of depicted cruelty. Consuming a piece of art does not make you a supporter of the ideas presented. Your ethical self is created by your public rhetoric and your private actions, not by your willingness to sit through a filmed act of violence.

Eno

Eno. Gary Hustwit, 2024.

😸

English language. Runtime approximately 85 minutes.


Summary: Eno considers killing a fly.


A friend provides these comments at Letterboxd. Check their other content also!


A wonderful anti-auteur, non-linear music journal (the word “bio” is false here because it implies someone else is telling the story. Rather, here, the software is randomly selecting files from a database, which can be added to at anytime—even after the film has been aired). This is the first ever generative film with millions of possible variations making it different every time you see it. 


But the generative mode of the film is but a complement to Eno themself who embodies the philosophy the film speaks to. Their emphasis on integration and surrender; the way they incorporate and are inspired by nature; their reframing of genius to scenius; and how they approach art as a fluid movement across a spectrum rather than remaining in fixed points; and even their equalising idea of suggesting that beyond all individual artistic conceptions, at the basis, all art is merely trying to convey emotion (similar to Deleuze’s affect theory); all this serves to show Brian Eno as one of the greatest living artistic minds and surely the first ever posthuman musician. Such an enjoyable experience. Every artist should see this!

(The one flaw was Eno wanting to kill a fly and so their symbiotic ideas of co-existence apparently falls short of including other animals. Eco, but still speciesist. Thus, eco Eno still has ego.)


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